The April 10, 2012 dead-tree edition of The Oregonian lead with a big dose of global warming realism.

This is what I was greeted with when I trotted out to fetch my dead-tree edition of The Oregonian this morning: “Global warming without warming” – above the fold! I’d seen the on-line version of this story last night with its own headline – “Global warming ‘hiatus’ in recent years helps spur skepticism” – but to see it lead the dead-tree edition was even more satisfying.

To his credit, reporter Scott Learn points out some facts that Joe Romm would characterize as “long-debunked denier talking points”. And yet, The Oregonian is nobody’s idea of a global warming denier :

For people who want more action on global warming, an inconvenient truth has arisen over the last decade: Annual average temperatures stayed relatively flat globally — and dropped in the United States and Oregon — despite mankind’s growing release of greenhouse gases.

The hiatus in temperature increases may be contributing to higher public skepticism about warming, particularly in the United States.

Climatologists, and climate models, are overestimating the impact of greenhouse gases on warming relative to natural climate cycles, they say, and aren’t being held accountable when warming projections don’t pan out.

“They just keep moving the goalposts to where you can never get a satisfactory answer,” Wiese says.

Kudos to The Oregonian for having the guts to report the truth, rather than just regurgitating the blathering coming from “the consensus”.

]]>http://algorelied.com/?feed=rss2&p=43025As their model fails, NOAA says: “We’re working on updating the model”http://algorelied.com/?p=4294
http://algorelied.com/?p=4294#commentsFri, 30 Mar 2012 15:51:07 +0000Editorhttp://algorelied.com/?p=4294Climate models? Nah. In this case it’s models predicting when Japanese earthquake debris starts washing up on the West Coast of the US, which only serves as further evidence that nearly all computer models cannot be relied upon.

NOAA originally predicted debris from the tsunami triggered by the 9.0 earthquake in Tohoku, Japan, in March of 2011 would begin washing up on shores in the Pacific Northwest in 2013. Those were rough estimates based on forecasted ocean conditions and reports of debris from fishing and commercial vessels.

Perhaps the largest piece of debris resulting from last year's tsunami in Japan is this fishing boat. It was sighted March 20, drifiting 150 miles off the coast of British Columbia. Photo via Canadian Department of National Defence

Debris from the March 2011 Japanese tsunami will likely wash ashore sooner than originally thought.That’s a prediction the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says was confirmed by the sighting of a Japanese fishing vessel lost in the tsunami and spotted last week in Canadian waters off the Queen Charlotte Islands.

Faced with the facts, NOAA responds:

“We’re working on updating the model,” said Dianna Parker, NOAA spokeswoman. “We expect results will show some of the debris that rides a little higher will arrive ahead of schedule. The bulkier debris, sitting lower in the water, will take longer.”

DETROIT (Reuters) — A $100,000-plus Fisker Automotive luxury car died during Consumer Reports speed testing for reasons that are still unknown, leaving the struggling electric car startup with another blow to its image.

“It is a little disconcerting that you pay that amount of money for a car and it lasts basically 180 miles before going wrong,” David Champion, senior director for the magazine’s automotive test center, told Reuters.

Fisker has benefited from the publicity generated when actor Leonardo DiCaprio was handed the first Karma last summer and pop idol Justin Bieber received one as a gift this month.

The breakdown of the Consumer Reports car is more bad news for a company that already recalled some Karmas. Fisker also has changed its CEO and halted production over the past month as it seeks to renegotiate the terms of a $529 million loan from the U.S. Department of Energy.

]]>http://algorelied.com/?feed=rss2&p=42727Video: DeSmogBlogger Chris Mooney admits, “You have the rise of the blogosphere, where global warming denial is actually running rampant, and I think it’s totally got us whupped”http://algorelied.com/?p=4259
http://algorelied.com/?p=4259#commentsMon, 05 Mar 2012 23:58:19 +0000Editorhttp://algorelied.com/?p=4259This video is from December 21, 2009 at COP15 – just about a month after Climategate 1.0 hit – so it’s not exactly fresh, but I just discovered it on YouTube, and DeSmogblogger Chris Mooney makes a very frank admission about the skeptic blogosphere that I believe went unnoticed back in ’09, but is relevant even 2+ years later:

Mooney:

“…You have the rise of the blogosphere, where global warming denial is actually running rampant, and I think it’s totally got us whupped, in terms of pro-climate bloggers versus anti-climate bloggers….”

One explanation of why the alarmists were, and are continuing to get “whupped”, was noted by Ross McKitrick recently, and was featured on WUWT as last week’s quote of the week. McKitrick:

“The problem the alarmists had, was that there was never anything substantial to hit back at. They had the equivalents of the big guns and the massive air support but there never was a skeptic HQ to be pounded, no big central organization, no massed ranks of skeptic soldiers or even any third-party backing the resistance.

Every one of the skeptics was a lone volunteer guerrilla fighter, who needed absolutely no logistical support of any kind to continue the fight indefinitely. The alarmists never understood this, preferring to think that there simply had to be some massive hidden organization orchestrating the resistance. While they wasted time and effort attacking targets that only existed in their head, each of the guerrillas chewed on them mercilessly in their own particular way.”

The index is calculated from Dr. Roy Spencer’s UAH Globally Averaged Satellite-Based Tropospheric Temperatures that are released each month. The GORE LIED graphics department simply whips out a magenta crayon, and marks up Dr. Spencer’s graph to show the temperature change since Al Gore released his fantasy/sci-fi movie, An Inconvenient Truth.

Through February, 2012 globally averaged temperatures have plunged .56°°F (.31°C) since An Inconvenient Truth was released at the Sundance Film Festival on January 24, 2006 – truly an inconvenient truth.

]]>http://algorelied.com/?feed=rss2&p=423692009 video: DeSmog’s Brendan DeMelle ironically explains that as citizen journalists, bloggers should “report facts, and not lies”http://algorelied.com/?p=4227
http://algorelied.com/?p=4227#commentsTue, 28 Feb 2012 06:30:52 +0000Editorhttp://algorelied.com/?p=4227An Inconvenient Video from COP-15 (2009) featuring DeSmog Blog’s Brendan Demelle. This video was deemed soooo compelling by viewers that in the two years it’s been posted it had a whopping nine views when I scrounged it up from the YouTube dustbin. An excerpt from Demelle discussing the state of journalism, and the rise of bloggers:

“…with the struggling economy which is hurting newsrooms there just aren’t as many resources to devote to deep investigative journalism than there used to be, and I think that’s why you see a rise in citizen journalism, people taking it upon themselves to go and try to figure out what the facts are and to report the facts. Also, you know, one of the things that Danny mentioned is that journalists are, you know, taught to be objective and not to have a view. I’d just say that you’re also taught to report facts, and not lies and misdeeds….”